Best Known As: Film Director,  Film Writer,  Film Actor

Gist:  Sean Justin Penn (born August 17, 1960) is an American film actor and director, who is also known for being a political activist. He is a two-time Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River and Milk, as well as receiving a Golden Globe Award for the former and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter.

Life Facts:  Penn was born in Los Angeles County, California, the son of Leo Penn, an actor and director, and Eileen Ryan (née Annucci), an actress. He has one living brother, musician Michael Penn. Another brother, actor Chris Penn, died in 2006. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Russia, According to Penn's mother, Leo Penn may have had distant Spanish ancestry, as the family's surname was originally "Piñón".

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Penn was supposedly engaged to actress Elizabeth McGovern, his co-star in 1984's Racing with the Moon, after which he dated Susan Sarandon. Penn's personal life began to attract media attention when he married pop star Madonna in 1985. The relationship was marred by violent outbursts against the press, including one incident for which he was arrested for assaulting a photographer on a film set; Penn was sentenced to 60 days in jail in mid-1987, of which he served 33 days. It is also suggested that when Penn discovered the paparazzo in his hotel room, he hung him by his ankles from the ninth-floor balcony. Madonna dedicated her third studio album, True Blue to Penn, referring to him in the liner notes as "the coolest guy in the universe". Later in the marriage, Penn was charged with felony domestic assault, a charge for which he pleaded to a misdemeanor. Penn and Madonna divorced in 1989.

He soon began a relationship with Robin Wright, and their first child, Dylan Frances, was born in 1991. Their second child, Hopper Jack, was born in 1993. Penn and Wright married in 1996 and lived in Ross, California. The relationship has gone through on-and-off again periods in recent years. Divorce plans and separation have been announced, beginning in December 2007, and again in April 2009, only to be withdrawn, most recently in May 2009.

During a separation from Wright in the mid 1990s, Penn dated singer and songwriter Jewel. He was also the director of the original video for Jewel's hit song "You Were Meant for Me".

Penn's younger brother, Chris, died from an enlarged heart in his Santa Monica condominium on January 24, 2006.

Along with Johnny Depp, Mick Hucknall, and John Malkovich, Penn was a part-owner of the Parisian restaurant-bar Man Ray.

In September 2005, Penn traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, to aid Hurricane Katrina victims. He was physically involved in rescuing people, although there was criticism that his involvement was a PR stunt as he hired a photographer to come along with his entourage.

Director Spike Lee interviewed Penn for his documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, about Hurricane Katrina.

Career Facts:  Penn appeared in a 1974 episode of the Little House on the Prairie television series as a then blond-haired extra when his father, Leo, directed some of the episodes.

Penn launched his film career with the 1981 film Taps, where he played a key role as a military high school cadet opposite protagonist Timothy Hutton. Tom Cruise also made one of his first film appearances as another cadet in the action-drama. A year later, he appeared in the hit comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (in the role of surfer-stoner Jeff Spicoli). Penn's portrayal of Spicoli was immensely popular and the film remained his most commercially successful work for many years. In 1983, Penn turned in one of his best early performances as Mick O'Brien, a troubled youth in the drama Bad Boys. It earned Penn favorable reviews and jump started his career as a serious actor.

In 1985, Penn gave a memorable performance in the role of Andrew Daulton Lee in The Falcon and the Snowman, which closely followed an actual criminal case. Lee was a former drug dealer by trade, convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union and was originally sentenced to life in prison. Lee was paroled in 1998. In an interview for the The Guardian in April, 2005, it was stated that Penn later hired Lee as his personal assistant, partly because he wanted to reward Lee for allowing him to play Lee in the film, and also because he was a firm believer in rehabilitation and thought Andrew Lee should be successfully reintegrated into society since he was a free man again.

In 1986 he starred in the drama At Close Range, opposite Christopher Walken. The film was also based on a true story and gained positive reviews from critics. The film featured his then wife Madonna's single "Live to Tell". The music video for the song, which featured clips from the film, played heavily on MTV and helped promote the film.

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Penn has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor five times and won the award twice. The academy first recognized his work playing a racist murderer on death row in Tim Robbins' 1995 drama Dead Man Walking. Penn was noted in 1999 for his comedic performance as an egotistical jazz guitarist in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown. He received his third nomination in 2001 after portraying a mentally-handicapped father in I am Sam. In 2003, Penn finally won for his role in Clint Eastwood's Boston crime-drama Mystic River. In 2004, he played a disturbed man bent on killing the president in The Assassination of Richard Nixon. He received his fifth nomination and second win for his role as Harvey Milk in the 2008 film Milk. He was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2004.

Penn's interest in politics is reflected in some of his recent film roles. In 2006 he portrayed populist governor Willie Stark (based on Huey Long) in an adaptation of the classic American novel All the King's Men, though the film was a critical and commercial failure. In November 2008, Penn earned rave reviews for his portrayal of real-life gay rights icon and politician Harvey Milk in the biopic Milk and was nominated for best actor for the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards.